Rajkumar Santoshi hits back with 'Halla Bol'

When a film is stuck in cans for close to a year and the release date gets postponed every two weeks, it's a field day for cynics all over.

Published: Wednesday,Jan 16, 2008 12:06 PM GMT-07:00

cherryfruits

And why not? After all the film's director hadn't been having the best phase of his career (Raj Kumar Santoshi's last release ‘Family’ starring Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Bhumika and newcomer Aryaman was a box office failure), the film's main lead Ajay Devgan didn't really have a particular exciting 2007 (‘Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag’ and ‘Cash’) while the genre (social) wasn't in synch with the kind of films (mainly comedies) which were finding prominence in last so many months.

This is why when ‘Halla Bol’ finally arrived, as expected the film didn't quite open to a good response. However, as the opening day progressed and the film moved into the weekend, ‘Halla Bol’ finally started finding its audience. The word of mouth has ranged from being decent to quite good and as things stand today, the verdict is out - Rajjumar Santoshi has hit back at his detractors and bounced into action with ‘Halla Bol’.

Now that's ironical since ‘Halla Bol’ would easily go down as one of his most under-hyped and under-promoted film of Rajkumar Santoshi during last so many years. The film is now managing to find an audience mainly due to its own strength rather than an extensive publicity and PR drive. Though critic response has been mixed with reviews ranging from very good to average and some being even bad, the social message of 'aam janta' coming together has been accepted well.

While there are numerous scenes in the film which bear Rajkumar Santoshi's stamp, especially the ones in the second half, a fact which cannot be denied is that when it comes to the actors, the film belongs to both Ajay Devgan as well as Pankaj Kapur. Between the two of them, they have enough clap worthy scenes which remind of the cinema of 80s/90s when the concept of multiplex audience didn't exist and films were made keeping in mind the taste of mass audience.

As of now ‘Halla Bol’ is turning out to be a bona fide mass film. Even though one waits with bated breath to see if it works with the 'multiplex audience' over a period of time, at the least it has succeeded in doing is find an audience amongst the common man. An audience which still loves to clap hard when one man's cry of 'halla bol' changes the world around him!

-Joginder Tuteja (SAMPURN)